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KDE on Windows 0.9.2 installation screenshots

July 31, 2008

I want to share some screen captures that I took of the KDE Windows 0.9.2 installer. Possibly out of date with KDE 4.1 being released, but I forgot that I had taken these images until a question about KDE/Windows was asked on a mailing list.

The images show every step along the installation process. The installer is good first attempt, although usability experts could certainly help clean up the screen flow. Some examples from someone that’s not a usability expert (that’s me):

Screen 2 of 15 – Installation directory: Looks like it pulls from the registry or already has a cached value, because it defaulted to a previous Firefox installation.

Screen 8 of 15 – Download Server settings: Odd screen. Why sort by “Eastern”, “Western”, etc? Also, I believe that highlighted entry was originally chosen. Why? Is that the preferred server? I can’t tell. I can’t recall exactly, but I think that I had some problems getting a location will all of the packages. Ideally, we would move to a model where the selection box would have primary/preferred servers with known/proven performance and completeness, and then secondary servers.

Screen 9 of 15: Package Selection: Any defaults that we can pre-select based on typical preferences? Any example applications we can list in the “Package Notes” column? Can we collapse the language options?

Screen 12 of 15: Downloading Packages: The progress bar and KB numbers need some help – they weren’t functioning as expected.

Screen 13 of 15: Download Failed: If you chose the same server(s) I did, get used to this warning. Again, I have no idea if it was the particular download sites that I chose, but I almost got Repetitive Stress Syndrome from ‘Retry’ over the course of trying to get every package. Between this issue and Screen 12, I didn’t have much faith that I was doing everything right or was going to complete the installation successfully.

But I apparently did. An actual review of the applications deserves another blog entry, but the polish was variable as would be expected. For our edutainment apps, they largely worked flawlessly. Performance seemed native. The only issue was that of memory use: if you only open up KWrite, don’t expect Task Manager to give you Good News in comparison to an application like Notepad++. More on specific applications later. I need to go back and launch those applications again, because I’m curious how the team will handles updates to the installer itself or updates to packages (due to releases like 4.1 for example).

This entry was really only supposed to note that I had taken snapshots of the installation steps if you’re curious about how the installer works or want to use some of these images. But all in all, I was definitely pleasantly surprised by the progress made on this front: The installer worked, was by-and-large clear on instructions and steps, and resulted in many stable/performant applications. To be blunt, I didn’t expect the result to be this far along. Great job KDE Windows team!